OSX.x isn't that good (?) - vm, cache etc...

arri

arri

Registered
ok.
i like osx
pleasant to work on,
and ...hardly... crashes.

Real crashes (kernel panics etc.)
are rare indeed, but i'm experiencing
very great drawbacks sometimes,
when working on my powerbook for 1 day,
using a number of different app.
for instance;

surfing the web (safari), playing music (itunes),
editing some images (photoshop),
editting+printing some PDF's (indesign/preview)
working on webpages/scripts (bbedit) while downloading
a large quicktime movie (Quicktime player)
and so on..

after a few hours, the machine just gets so slow,
so that, although it didn't crash yet, i just choose to reboot.
After that everything is fine again.

What happens is amongst others:
- HD fills up with thousands of cache-files.
- VM-swap-space increases sometimes to over 1 Gbyte

i tried using Cache Out X, but that doesn't solve the problom,
VM-swapfiles are gone indeed, but still the harddisk-space isn't
released..

my point is: However great the OS is, this is i think
one of the greatest flaws in the system.

...or is it just my powerbook that has this?

667Mhz, 512Mb Ram, 256 Kb L2 Cache

more ram would help ofcourse, but apple delivers machines
with this amount.
is it particular to this machine, and the small L2 cache

Or is it really OSX?

experiences, anyone?

arri
 
Maybe one of the aps you use on a regular basis has a memory leak?
I have experienced symptoms similar to what you described (my case was with jaguar) and it ended up being bad third party software.

Also, how full is your hard drive? I've also found that once the system drive gets over 85 - 90% full (depending on its size of course) that things really go to hell in a hand basket performance wise.
 
Two of those programs that you mentioned (Photoshop and Indesign) also have their own form of virtual memory. They are both very memory intensive programs.

Doing the things that you mentioned, the OS is probably paging in/out a lot of data to the swapfiles, which are handled properly by the OS.

Altough OS X now handles vm a little different than before in how it now allocate chunks of vm, it doesn't really do it much different than any other flavor of *nix out on the market.

If you can afford it, max out your RAM @ 1 gig.

Also, maybe try not to keep to many memory intensive applications running at the same time. If you have one open, but aren't using it, use apple-h to hide the application, allowing it to run in the background and free up (some) processor and ram.

I myself have a Ti 667 and have 1 gig of ram, granted I don't normaly use it for photoshop work (use my desktop for that), I have seen it bog down if I run to many memory intensive applications at once. Quitting/hiding the ones I'm not using the most always seems to help.
 
Well, for what its worth, my Powerbook has been left on for days and I've not seen a single slowdown. I mainly program (Netbeans. The mother of all memory hogs :)), do a lot of MS Word and Excel, and sometimes I leave my machine running for a long time doing simulations in octave. And no, no slowdowns that you've mentioned.

Its most probably some 3rd party app that your'e using. YMMV
 
I sometimes run into such problems as you describe when harddrive space is relatively low and working with Photoshop as well as Illustrator. Usually, it's enough to purge PS's caches and restart the two applications. I usually also quit all other applications when that happens, then use OmniDiskSweeper to get rid of the stuff I don't really need and then 'rebuild' my working environment (start applications, open documents etc.).
 
File-swapping and community applications seem to do that for me. Direct connect slows everything down to a crawl. My fathers tibook behaves like yours. i think it is because he has never reinstalled the system. Just constantly updating (10.1-10.2-10.3). but he doesnt dare to let me reformat his hard-drive cuz he has finally got everything to play nice with all the pc's and printers at work. :) i think i will do it while he is asleep the next time i visit my parents :D
 
If you aren't running any services such as Web Sharing, etc., next time instead of restarting try launching the Terminal and typing at the prompt

su
*THEN TYPE IN YOUR ROOT PASSWORD*
SystemStarter restart

Wherever you see a new line above press the "return" button.
This basically restarts your system while leaving all your programs running.
 
Giaguara said:
the RAM makes the difference. 1 GB is a lot smoother than 512 mb.. ;)
Click to expand...
yes, obviously. but still this is how apple delivers a powerbook
Fahrvergnuugen said:
...how full is your hard drive?
Click to expand...
i always keep around 2Gig free on boot volume. this reduces to a± 800Mb while working sometimes.. hardly ever less.
naodx said:
Two of those programs that you mentioned (Photoshop and Indesign) also have their own form of virtual memory. They are both very memory intensive programs.
Doing the things that you mentioned, the OS is probably paging in/out a lot of data to the swapfiles, which are handled properly by the OS.
Altough OS X now handles vm a little different than before in how it now allocate chunks of vm, it doesn't really do it much different than any other flavor of *nix out on the market. If you can afford it, max out your RAM @ 1 gig.
Click to expand...

I assigned other volumes as scratchdisk for photoshop. Apart from paging memory, i get the impression that the caching system also has a lot to do with it. caches are usually a lot smaller than the system swapfiles, but they are many in number.
Putting in 1Gig will help a lot, yes. Still it won't help reducing the number of cache-files. Especially Safari's cache. Cache Out X usually frees around 300 Mb in (browser?)-cachefiles only. None in VM-swapfiles.
Decado said:
i think it is because he has never reinstalled the system. Just constantly updating (10.1-10.2-10.3)
Click to expand...
i completely reformatted and freshly installed when going to 10.3
Decado said:
su
*THEN TYPE IN YOUR ROOT PASSWORD*
SystemStarter restart
Click to expand...
i'll try that.

thanks for your replys

arri
 
arri said:
I assigned other volumes as scratchdisk for photoshop. Apart from paging memory, i get the impression that the caching system also has a lot to do with it. caches are usually a lot smaller than the system swapfiles, but they are many in number.
Putting in 1Gig will help a lot, yes. Still it won't help reducing the number of cache-files. Especially Safari's cache. Cache Out X usually frees around 300 Mb in (browser?)-cachefiles only. None in VM-swapfiles.
Click to expand...

You will never reclaim VM swapfiles. The OS manages this, and prevents ANYONE from touching them (even root). When they aren't needed, they are deleted off the disk automatically. The reason for this is the swapfile stores a copy of a program's RAM state (when it isn't being used by the program), loading it when needed. Large VM swapfiles usually means you are running an app that is using a LOT of RAM. If you have both Photoshop and Illustrator running, you NEED more RAM. I run just fine on 320MB in my Lombard, but I don't run more than one RAM-intensive app at a time. Photoshop doesn't even run smoothly unless it is under 6 layers. 512MB is *NOT* going to cut it if you want 2 of Adobe's bloat apps running along-side a bunch of other apps at the same time.
 
Krevinek said:
You will never reclaim VM swapfiles. The OS manages this, and prevents ANYONE from touching them (even root). When they aren't needed, they are deleted off the disk automatically. ....
Click to expand...


OK. but whenever i quit all application, only finder is left, there's still a number of swapfiles left (in /var/vm/), in size variyng from 64 to 512 Mb.
So the system doesn't release then, only until a reboot..

arri
 
2 gig left on the hard drive, isn't enough space for virtual memory. I would say the absolute minimum would be 5 or 6 gig. I have easily seen over 6 gig of swapfiles on my desktop, which has 2 gig of ram in it.

And yes Apple ships it with 512 mb of ram, and in my opinion I wish they would put more in, but they are just like any other company when it comes to sales and profits.

My brother's girlfriend bought a computer from Compaq last year (why I'm not sure :) ), and it shipped with Windows XP, a 1.4 celeron, and only 256 mb of ram, which was also shared by the integrated graphics chip.

Have you ever seen XP run on a machine with only 256mb of ram??? shared ram at that...I could literally what the screen redraw at times...wasn't pretty at all.

But manufacturers will release machines at times that meet the minimum requirements for operating, then leave it up to the user to decide if they need to upgrade.
 
I don't have a PowerBook, but my machines typically run several weeks or even months without rebooting and no noticeable degradation in performance. The systems do not sleep, but the Monitors and Drives do. In fact about the only time they are rebooted is when I install new software or updates that require a restart. I try not to let the free space on a drive fall below 25% and never ever below 15% and if a drive approaches the 75% fill level, I make it a point to defragment both the files and the drive with TechTool Pro 4 but that hasn't happened in a good while.
 
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